Sunday, February 26, 2017

Book Review: Infini by Krista and Becca Ritchie

"Don’t have a best friend that’s a girl" — this was the advice from my older cousin. I didn’t take it. Because he followed with, "friends don’t f*ck friends. And you’ll want to f*ck her."

It was terrible advice.

My cousin should’ve told me that being best friends with Baylee Wright — since she was twelve — would be the best and worst decision of my life.

He should have told me to protect her from what was coming.

He should have told me that when a darkness crawled towards us, there’d be no safety net.

Now I’ve signed back on to the same Vegas acrobatic show as Baylee, working together for the first time in years. And she tells me that she’s having trouble in a certain “area” of her life — because of our past.

“You can help me fix it,” she says.

And then she hands me a list.

Krista and Becca Ritchie are one of my favorite writing pairs and I absolutely love the stories they create. The Addicted series is, well, addicting, and I absolutely loved Amour Amour. The moment it was announce that they were releasing another book in the Aerial Ethereal world, I counted down the days until I could pick it up.

For Luka Katova, the acrobatic world has been his life and he's performed with his family since he could walk. One choice when he was younger put his entire performing life in jeopardy and he had to choose between the love of his life and his family. Family is life, though, so Luka is forced to put his family first. Years later, changes are being made to the Vegas Show that Luka has been hired on for and he finds himself performing with the person he has promised never to speak to or of again. Now that they're back in each other's lives, Luka realizes he never stopped loving her, but can he risk his family, again, for love?

OH MY GOSH. Talk about chemistry! I loved the Katova men when we met them in Nikolai's story, so I knew Luka was going to be the perfect hero for this book. The moment Bailey walked back into his life, there was no denying the love or attraction between the two. Since they had built a relationship for years when they were younger teenagers, this didn't feel like insta-love at all. Instead, they were able to jump head first back into their feelings, but they knew they couldn't act on them if they wanted to keep their families and lives as performers. Both characters felt so much pressure to keep their jobs, but they found it harder and harder to deny each other, not only because of their lust but also because of their honest and pure love.

Along with the romance and relationships in this book, the reason I love this series is because of the world of performing and acrobats that the characters live and breathe. Luka and Bailey were born into the business and have no idea how to live any other way, so when their work was put in jeopardy, it made sense why they would give up anything to keep it, including each other. It was so fun watching them practice their performance and work together in such a magical way. I also loved seeing who the family interacted with one another during and outside of work. Books far too often leave out family, so I loved how important family, no matter how near or far, was to our characters.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading anything by the Ritchie twins, you are seriously missing out. The relationships, both romantic and familial, are so integral in the characters' lives and make the story so much stronger and addicting. Infini was a fantastic addition to the Aerial Ethereal series and I am already dying for more books about the Kotova siblings!